Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1034 - 2.4. Elements of the DNS

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### 2.4. Elements of the DNS

The DNS has three major components:

- The DOMAIN NAME SPACE and RESOURCE RECORDS, which are specifications for a tree structured name space and data associated with the names. Conceptually, each node and leaf of the domain name space tree names a set of information, and query operations are attempts to extract specific types of information from a particular set. A query names the domain name of interest and describes the type of resource information that is desired. For example, the Internet uses some of its domain names to identify hosts; queries for address resources return Internet host addresses.

- NAME SERVERS are server programs which hold information about the domain tree's structure and set information. A name server may cache structure or set information about any part of the domain tree, but in general a particular name server has complete information about a subset of the domain space, and pointers to other name servers that can be used to lead to information from any part of the domain tree. Name servers know the parts of the domain tree for which they have complete information; a name server is said to be an AUTHORITY for these parts of the name space. Authoritative information is organized into units called ZONEs, and these zones can be automatically distributed to the name servers which provide redundant service for the data in a zone.

- RESOLVERS are programs that extract information from name servers in response to client requests. Resolvers must be able to access at least one name server and use that name server's information to answer a query directly, or pursue the query using referrals to other name servers. A resolver will typically be a system routine that is directly accessible to user programs; hence no protocol is necessary between the resolver and the user program.

These three components roughly correspond to the three layers or views of the domain system:

- From the user's point of view, the domain system is accessed through a simple procedure or OS call to a local resolver. The domain space consists of a single tree and the user can request information from any section of the tree.

- From the resolver's point of view, the domain system is composed of an unknown number of name servers. Each name server has one or more pieces of the whole domain tree's data, but the resolver views each of these databases as essentially static.

- From a name server's point of view, the domain system consists of separate sets of local information called zones. The name server has local copies of some of the zones. The name server must periodically refresh its zones from master copies in local files or foreign name servers. The name server must concurrently process queries that arrive from resolvers.

In the interests of performance, implementations may couple these functions. For example, a resolver on the same machine as a name server might share a database consisting of the the zones managed by the name server and the cache managed by the resolver.

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Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1034 - 2.4. Elements of the DNS